Drag and resize the extracted May Queen into your document. Right-click on the May Queen layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Outer Glow, set the Blend Mode to Color Dodge, Opacity to 22%, Color to #FFFFBE, Size to 46px and leave the rest as default.

Rresize the Fairy and place it on the palm of May Queen. Right-click on the Fairy layer and choose Blending Options. Activate Outer Glow, set the Blend Mode to Color Dodge, Opacity to 22%, Color to #FFFFBE, Size to 46px and leave the rest as default. Activate Color Overlay, set the Blend Mode to Color Dodge and Color to #C8FF05.

Duplicate May Queen layer. Select the lower May Queen layer and go to Edit > Free Transform. Scale the image downwards like the one shown in the diagram.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Set the Lightness to -100. Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 5px. Erase those unwanted shadows behind the May Queen with the Eraser tool.

Create a new layer and name it as Glitter. Select the Brush tool, set the size to 15px and brush type to Star. Set the foreground color to #FFFF00. Open up the Brush Palette and activate Scattering. Set the Scatter to 330%, Control to Pen Pressure, Count to 1 and Count Jitter to 0. Draw a path around the May Queen with Pen tool like the one shown below.

While selecting Pen tool, right-click on the path you have just drawn and choose Stroke Path. Set the mode to Brush and check on Simulate Pressure. Right-click on Glitter layer and activate Outer Glow. Set the Blend Mode to Color Dodge, Opacity to 75%, Size to 5 and leave the rest as default. Activate Color Overlay and set the color to #E9F8AC. Do the same for another new path around May Queen again.

Create a new layer and name it as Flare. Download CS4 V2 Light Effect Brushes here. Select the Brush tool and choose crismas2.psd. Set the foreground color to #FFFFFF and paint a large flare behind the May Queen layer. Set the Blend Mode of Flare layer to Overlay.

Now merge all the layers you have created so far and name this new layer as Original. Duplicate the layer and set its Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Duplicate another layer and go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 10px. Set the Blend Mode of this layer to Screen.

Create a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. Set the Hue to 0, Saturation to -50 and Lightness to 0. Colorize remain unchecked.

Create a new Color Balance Adjustment Layer. Set the Color Levels to -17, 16, -20. Leave the rest as default settings.

Create a new Curves Adjustment Layer. Set a point in the middle of the curve with Output at 120 and Input at 130.

Create a new Levels Adjustment Layer. Set the values to 20, 1, 239.

Create a new Color Balance Adjustment Layer. Set the Color Levels to 23, 0, -18. Leave the rest as default settings.

You may wish to add in more fairies to complete a more magical design like what I did below. Hope you have enjoyed reading the tutorial.

Thanks for this wonderful tutorial! It was my first attempt to create something like this & it went very smooth (except, to be honest, the drawing with the pen, but that’s lack of skill on my account !). You can see the result here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jinterwas/4934797072/.

@michq: Hi there! Are you from Singapore too? If yes, I think Nanyang Poly’s Digital Media Design course is pretty cool. Interviewed several students from there have shown me great course works before. You may wish to check out more from their website.

Reducing saturation is an easy way to coordinate elements between them but the result is always the same ; gothy/moody and colors are unnatural. It’s more professional and difficult to adjust one element to the background than polish the entire picture with grey levels. Colors were better on the original stock. Black is too intense. A softy touch would have been more magical.

I wann to thank u for this tutorial . It is really usefull and helpful to create amazing photo effect. I hope u add another tutorials because I am student ( Graphic and design ) In malaysaia.Thank u for co-peration

hey this is a great tutorial but ive come into a problem its killing me! when you want us to use the pen tool to make a path around the woman i cant get my original pen path to dissapear after applying the brush to it. please help me!